European universities organized numerous international Intensive Projects (IP) during Erasmus Lifelong Learning Program 2007-2013. The main principle of international IP was to gather students and teachers from partner institutes together for 2-3 weeks long intensive, project-based learning experiment. Students were divided into multicultural teams, which solved a topical engineering problem in CDIO Context.
Subject was selected to be multidisciplinary and comprehensive. Students participating on the IP reported that it was an eye-opening experience. This was due to the multi-disciplinary approach where students were forced out of their comfort zones and were required to collaborate with team members. The class schedule was designed such that student groups were required to do conceive phase, design phase, and implementation phase.
For teachers, the IP was deepening long lasting relationships and was providing an opportunity where teachers could freely open discussions on various topics. The IP strengthened the partnership between the universities. In many cases the IP gave a conceiving ideas for curricula or course content enhancements. In the academic world there are rarely, hardly ever, an opportunity to develop new course content with 10 - 20 colleagues in an international context.
This paper introduces the concept, summarizes the results, and proposes how IP’s can be revitalized without external funding.
Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017